Julia Cumes Photography

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Portraits

34 images Created 6 Nov 2019

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  • “Refugees are mothers, fathers, sisters, brothers, children, with the same hopes and ambitions as us—except that a twist of fate has bound their lives to a global refugee crisis on an unprecedented scale.”— Khaled Hosseini<br />
This week I've been documenting the Global Education Movement's inspiring new higher education programs in a remote refugee camp in northern Kenya. This young woman, who is just beginning the program, came to the camp from Somalia as a child without her parents in the care of family friends. She has not seen her family since and expressed to me her wonder and excitement about beginning the degree program.<br />
While she is one of the lucky ones, her story is just one of the almost 200,000 in the camp and one of over 25 million refugees worldwide.
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  • I photographed Umetesi in Kigali, Rwanda, at the "Through the Eyes of Hope" program where every afternoon she watched with wide eyes as I taught photography to older children, mostly boys. While Rwanda has one of the highest literacy rates for girls and women in Africa, Umetesi still confronts some of the issues girls struggle with all over Africa--the tendency of poor families to spend available money on the education of boys, the expectation that girls will carry out domestic and household work and the pressure for girls to marry young, particularly where they are seen as an economic burden on families.
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  • Delsa Pena, 85, lives alone in a small dark apartment in Havana and spends her days walking around the city so that she doesn't feel too lonely. She has six children, 14 grandchildren, 16 great grandchildren and one great-great grandchild. "The hardest experience in my life was when my husband fell in love with another woman and I had to leave him," she says. "I've always been unlucky in love," she adds. Of Cuban women she says, "we are beautiful loving and respectful. Before the revolution, we were domestic servants but now we have more rights and possibilities."
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  • After a two a half week assignment documenting refugee education programs here and in Burundi and South Africa, I finally had a moment to visit the art and photography program I taught at a few years ago here in Kigali. This is the wonderful woman who teaches craft at the program. She is so gentle and lovely with the kids and I wanted to make a worthy portrait of her.
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  • A young Burmese monk holds the resident monastery cat at a monastery in central Myanmar (Burma).
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  • Children snuggle with a dog.
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  • A Samburu warrior in Kenya.
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  • Arletis Francis, 26, photographed here at one of Havana's beloved salsa clubs, grew up in Guantanamo and came to Havana to study engineering. "I was so sad to leave my family but I knew I had to come here if I wanted to study," she says. She currently teaches computer skills to high school students and teaches salsa dancing on the side.  "My dream is to become a professional salsa dancer but is it very difficult. You have to get special papers to get the jobs that pay well, she explains.  "Actually, even now I make less as a computer teacher than a dancer and I also love to dance," she adds. Of Cuban women, she says "we are strong, fight hard, wake up every day to solve our family's problems and we are resilient."
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  • Retired Parker Ranch manager and cowboy, Jamie Dowsett, 85, who spent most of his life on horses and has rich stories to tell, is photographed wearing his favorite cowboy hat at his home in Waimea, Hi.  "I'm 85 years old and I still think that cows and horses are the best things that ever walked on earth.  I would give anything if I could still be a cowboy...being out there on the land where nobody bothers you, out in the open where it's quiet...the horses are giving you a wonderful ride in the beautiful countryside...that is a feeling not many people have the opportunity to experience," says Dowsett wistfully.
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  • Lalita Kamble, 50,  is photographed in the doorway of her home with her niece.  Kamble went blind at a young age and so, when she was eight years old, her parents dedicated her as a Devadasi.  "They said you can be buried as a married person now because you're married to Yellamma," she says, referring to the ritual of burying unmarried women in a lying down position while married women are buried sitting up. "I wished I could get married but I knew no man would marry because because of my blindness," she adds. Through a dairy program set up  by an organization called Vimochana Sangha which was founded to dismantle the Devadasi system, Kamble now takes care of a water buffalo and makes some income from the sale of its milk. Despite her acceptance of her lot in life, she does not support the continuation of the Devadasi system.
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  • I photographed this young woman a few months after she had been rescued from a brothel in Mumbai by a rescue foundation. She had been returned to her family in the countryside and was working for $1/day as a farm laborer, supporting her grandmother, mother and sister. She told me through a translator that she didn't know which life was worse--the one she'd had at the brothel or the one she had now. I thought this image captured her sense of being trapped.
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  • A Samburu warrior in Kenya with Mount Ololokwe in the background.
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  • A young woman is photographed in Myanmar (Burma).
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  • I photographed these two little girls and a doll’s head at Durban Deep’s old “Skomplaas” hostel. While the gold mine was still operating, the hostel housed hundreds of goldminers. Today a large number of families live in the crumbling buildings in very poor sanitary conditions. Having grown up in South Africa during the apartheid era, I did not miss the irony of the white disembodied doll's head. Despite the fact that apartheid ended more than 20 years ago, the country is still haunted by its apartheid past.
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  • Global Education Movement (GEM) Maps program in Lebanon.
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  • A teenaged boy sits on a tire and bounces a soccer ball on his feet at one of Durban Deep's old hostels on the outskirts of Johannesburg, South Africa. Behind him a poster pro-ANC poster encourages residents to register to vote.
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  • Ikiwa Abdulla puts on her hijab at her home in Fumba, Zanzibar.  Abdulla is a participant in a shellfish program developed by the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute and partly funded by Island Creek Oysters, an oyster company in Duxbury, MA, that hopes to teach women in Zanzibar how to cultivate shellfish. While women already harvest shellfish, the program will help replenish the already overfished stocks of oysters and clams and promote economic opportunities for women in rural villages in Zanzibar.
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  • Childhood cancer survivor and author, Billy Best, is photographed at Coastguard Beach in Eastham, MA.
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  • Caitlin Sholar, 9. of Junction City, KY, laughs after her brother, Trent, 11, smashed a cupcake into her face at the skateboard park at Millenium park in Danville, KY.  Caitlin, her brothers, Eli and Trent and older sister, Bethany, 13, came to the park to celebrate the birthday of friend, Emanuel, who just turned 9.  Caitlin this year joined her brothers' football team and was awarded MVP after playing well in a recent game. 10/17/07 Julia Cumes
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  • Sex workers worldwide have been severely impacted by HIV/AIDS.  This young girl spent less than a year working in Mumbai's redlight district before being rescued by a non-governmental organization called The Rescue Foundation.  During her brief time in Mumbai, she contracted HIV/AIDS.
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  • Ish and James Corothers, reflected in the baby grand piano, listen to Frank Zavaglia play every evening before dinner at Windsor Gardens, an assited-living facility.  The couple have been married for 58 years and James, a retired Bardstown judge, loves to sing, even though he's losing his memory. Frank, a retired professional musician, lives at Windsor Gardens because his wife, Ruth, has Alzheimers. 10/23/03 Julia cumes
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  • Mercy Bell is photographed in Oak Bluffs, MA on Martha's Vineyard.  Bell pooled her savings with her brother to buy a home in Vineyard Haven when she was just 24, a step toward building a family legacy. . 11/08/20 Julia Cumes for the Boston Globe
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  • Harpist, Katie Lynch, is photographed with Quivet Creek Marsh behind her in Dennis, MA.
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  • Jamie Dowsett, 85, who spent most of his life on horses and has rich stories to tell, is photographed riding one of his horses near his home in Waimea, Hi.  "I'm 85 years old and I still think that cows and horses are the best things that ever walked on earth.  I would give anything if I could still be a cowboy...being out there on the land where nobody bothers you, out in the open where it's quiet...the horses are giving you a wonderful ride in the beautiful countryside...that is a feeling not many people have the opportunity to experience," says Dowsett wistfully.
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